Nokia Networks

Voice over LTE (VoLTE)

Optimization

Contents

1. Introduction

2.

VoIP Client Options

3.

Radio Network Optimization

4.

Voice Quality Optimization

11

5. Handset Power Consumption Optimization

17

6. Summary

19

7.

19

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Further Reading

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1. Introduction
Mobile operator networks carry tens of billions of minutes of voice
traffic every day, the majority of it using Circuit Switched (CS) voice
in 2G and 3G technologies. Most LTE operators serve voice calls via
so-called CS-fallback function, while several operators have already
made the switch to Voice over LTE (VoLTE), providing a carrier grade
Voice over IP (VoIP) solution, built on IP-Multimedia Sub System (IMS)
architecture.
VoLTE provides a number of benefits for operators and end users by
enhancing LTE radio spectral efficiency and offering High Definition
(HD) voice quality. VoLTE can use LTE on low frequency spectrum
for good coverage, providing fast call setup times and enabling
LTE data rates during the voice call. Additionally, IMS architecture
is the foundation for new, innovative carrier-provided end-user
multimedia services. The main reasons for adopting VoLTE are
summarized in Figure 1.

Provide faster call setup time

Migrate from dual radio CDMA + LTE devices

to LTE only devices

Enhance voice quality with wideband codec

Take benet of low band LTE for

extended coverage

Enable simultaneous voice and LTE data

Improve spectral efficiency

Provide evolution from voice to rich next

generation IMS services

Prepare evolution to LTE only deployments

Fig. 1. Motivations for VoLTE.

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Deploying VoLTE requires a number of optimization steps to gain the

full benefit of the technologys potential. This white paper presents
a number of aspects of VoLTE optimization in radio networks and in
handsets to provide reliable voice with good quality and low handset
power consumption. The white paper also compares VoLTE with CS
voice and with over-the-top (OTT) VoIP solutions.
A VoLTE solution has synergies with Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi), where
operator voice can be run over Wi-Fi radio. If evolved packet core is
enhanced with evolved Packet Data Gateway (ePDG), the VoWiFi can
be considered an extension of VoLTE, providing seamless handovers
between the LTE and WiFi accesses, which also requires mobile
handset support.
The number of VoLTE deployments is increasing rapidly, with a wide
selection of handsets, including iPhone 6, supporting also VoWiFi.
VoWiFi specific considerations are covered in a separate VoWiFi
white paper.
The radio network optimization solutions are considered in this paper
first, followed by end-user quality optimization and finally focusing
on the optimization of handset power consumption. The contents
are summarized in Figure 2.

Radio network optimization

End user quality optimization

Terminal power consumption optimization

Fig. 2. Contents of this paper.

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2. VoIP Client Options

VoIP over LTE can be achieved using several different solutions.
A native VoLTE client can be integrated into the handset design,
allowing optimization of the handset power consumption and offering
interworking with legacy CS networks. The VoLTE client can also
benefit from Quality of Service (QoS) capability in the radio network
for voice packet prioritization. It is also possible to have a non-native
VoLTE client from third parties which runs on top of the application
processor. Also, any general VoIP application, such as Skype or Viber,
will work over LTE radio, but without QoS support.
This paper compares three voice options for quality and efficiency:
1. Native VoLTE client integrated in the handset chip set. The
number of commercial handsets with native VoLTE clients is
growing rapidly.
2. Non-native VoLTE clients. Third party applications which can
register to IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and establish VoLTE call
using QoS (QCI1). Examples include Bria and CSipSimple.
3. Over-the-Top (OTT) VoIP applications such as Skype, Facetime
and Viber.

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3. Radio Network Optimization

The success rate and the retainability of a VoLTE call must match and
exceed the level provided by CS connections. The key performance
indicators in the radio network are setup success rate, handover success
rate and call completion success rate. Network optimization also aims at
reducing the required bandwidth for voice and maximizing the capacity.
The network optimization includes parameter optimization and feature
activation, like header compression, TTI (Transmission Time Interval)
bundling and QoS. These features help to make VoLTE call reliability,
quality and efficiency significantly higher than with OTT VoIP applications.
Figure 3 presents the average IP user throughput, based on different
voice applications over a two minute call with a predefined voice and
silence pattern. The measurement assumes 23% talking, 23% listening
and 54% no activity. The throughput shows the impact of the codec bit
rate and the efficiency of the voice activity detection. The native VoLTE
with Adaptive Multirate Wideband (AMR WB) provided an average of 10.2
kbps with the codec rate of 23.85 kbps and 8.8 kbps with the codec rate
of 12.65 kbps.
The third-party Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) application with Adaptive
Multirate Wideband (AMR WB) codec averaged as low as 8 kbps when
using voice activity detection. The lower average throughput in this
case was a consequence of transmitting virtually nothing during silence
periods, which on the other hand contributed to a significant reduction
of the Mean Opinion Score MOS. This same application with Enhanced
Full rate Narrowband (EFR NB) codec generated up to 17.3 kbps, driven
by less efficient voice activity detection. The three OTT VoIP applications
ranged between 17.6 kbps to 42.8 kbps average throughput, depending
on the codec they used and the particular implementation of features
such as codec rate adaptation or voice activity detection.
45

42.8

40

35.8

35

kbps

30
25
20

17.6

17.3

15
10

10.2

8.3

8.8

5
0

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SIP EFR

SIP AMR OTT AP1 OTT AP2

WB

OTT AP3

Fig. 3. Measured throughput

VoLTE
VoLTE
of different VoIP codecs.
23.85 kbps 12.65 kbps

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The throughput measurements shown in Figure 3 include full IP

headers. VoLTE throughput requirements on the radio interface can
be further reduced with Robust Header Compression (ROHC,) which
improves spectral efficiency. ROHC runs between the base station
and the handset. Figure 4 illustrates the benefit of RoHC - the header
size is reduced from 40 bytes to 5 bytes, which is relevant for voice
traffic since the voice packets are small. For example, an AMR 23.85
kbps voice packet is 60 bytes and AMR 12.65 kbps just 32 bytes. The
header can be larger than the voice packet if header compression is
not used. Therefore, activation of header compression is essential for
maximizing VoLTE capacity.
45

Header compression

40
Header size (byte)

35
30
25
20

Original header size

Uplink header size
Downlink header size

15
10
5
0

Fig. 4. Benefit from header compression.

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VoLTE uplink performance in the weak signal can be enhanced with TTI
bundling which allows the handset to repeat the same transmission
in four consecutive 1 ms TTIs. TTI bundling makes the uplink more
robust and enhances coverage by 4 dB. The benefit of TTI bundling in
the weak signal is shown in Figure 5. The uplink Block Error Rate (BLER)
is reduced from 73% to 9% with TTI bundling. The low BLER maintains
good voice quality and avoids unnecessary retransmissions which eat
up substantial radio resources. TTI bundling is switched on only when
the handset hits the edge of the coverage area. TTI bundling runs
between the base station and the handset.
80.0

PUSCH BLER comparison

72.7

70.0

BLER (in %)

60.0

With TTI bundling

Without TTI bundling

50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0

9.0

0.0
Fig. 5. Benefit of TTI bundling in uplink quality.

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A high success rate for VoLTE calls requires reliable control channel
transmission, which can be obtained by optimized channel coding in the
radio interface to protect signaling quality. The high success rate also
requires that interference levels and excessive signaling can be controlled
in highly loaded cells. Figure 6 shows an example VoLTE call setup success
rate in a live network including tens of millions of VoLTE calls during the
measurement period. The success rate exceeds 99.7%, showing that
excellent VoLTE availability can be achieved even in the loaded network.
The network carried tens of billions of packet calls at the same time.
Another important factor for VoLTE is reliable mobility. The handover
success rate can be optimized with RF planning and new features included
in Nokia iSON (Self Organizing Network) such as Mobility Robustness
Optimization. This enables radio level connection re-establishment in the
event of handover failure.

100

VoLTE call setup success rate

98

96
(%)
94

92

90

Three-month period

Fig. 6. VoLTE call setup success rate.

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When the handset leaves the LTE coverage area, the VoLTE connection
can be handed over to a CS connection in a 3G or 2G network. This
procedure is called Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC) or
enhanced SRVCC (eSRVCC). If LTE coverage is extensive, the SRVCC
probability is low. It is beneficial to have a low SRVCC probability to
gain full benefit of VoLTE capabilities and to minimize any potential
loss in voice quality, or even call drops which may be caused by a radio
leg change. The SRVCC probability also depends on the parameter
settings, like minimum Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP), which
define the threshold when the LTE network initiates SRVCC. Figure 7
shows the probability of SRVCC in an example network. The SRVCC
probability is reduced by 7% to below 3% by network optimization.
More than a million SRVCC attempts are included in this graph.
SRVCC functionality is available for QCI1 connections but not for OTT
VoIP. If an OTT VoIP connection loses LTE coverage, the call continues
in the 3G or 2G network as a VoIP connection over a best effort data
connection, not as a CS call. VoIP in 3G can provide reasonable voice
quality in low loaded networks, but VoIP does not work in practice
on a 2G network. Also, the connection break during the inter-system
handover is substantially longer for best effort data than with SRVCC
for QCI1 (less that 300ms according 3GPP standard).
10%

Percentage of VoLTE Calls Using SRVCC

9%
8%
7%
6%
5%
4%
3%
2%
1%
0%

Three-month period

Fig. 7. Probability of VoLTE call using SRVCC.

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4. Voice Quality Optimization

The voice quality depends heavily on the voice codec sampling rate
and the resulting audio bandwidth. An AMR Narrowband (NB) codec
provides audio bandwidth of 80-3700 Hz, while an AMR Wideband (WB)
extends the audio bandwidth to 50-7000 Hz. Furthermore, handset
acoustics may limit the maximum bandwidth provided by the speech
codecs. Terminal acoustic requirements can be found in 3GPP TS
26.131. The bandwidth is illustrated in Figure 8. The CS connections
can use either AMR-NB or AMR-WB, while VoLTE in practice always uses
AMR-WB. The AMR-WB data rate for CS connection ranges from 6.6
kbps to 12.65 kbps, while the VoLTE connection can use data rates up
to 23.85 kbps, enhancing the quality of the connection compared to
HD voice in CS networks.
AMR - NB
80 - 3700 Hz
0.05 0.1

AMR - WB
50 - 7000 Hz
3

7 kHz

Fig. 8. Audio bandwidth of narrowband and wideband AMR.

The average user opinion of a systems speech quality can be
presented with MOS. Latency also has an influence on the perceived
quality. Traditionally, in network quality testing, absolute category
rating (ACR), listening-only tests, defined in the ITU-T P.800
Recommendation, have been used to collect subjective responses of
the performance of the telephone transmission system by listening
to spoken material and by giving the judgments on a five-point scale,
ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). The averaged results have been
presented as a mean opinion score (MOS).
In addition to subjective opinion, the abbreviation MOS is generally
used for scores that originate from objective models. Algorithms
have been developed for objective assessment of speech quality
in telecommunication applications, estimating subjective listening
tests performed in accordance with the ACR method. Objective
methods are often more convenient than subjective methods. The
latest standardized algorithm, Perceptual Objective Listening Quality
Assessment (POLQA, or ITU-T P.863) has two operational modes: a
narrowband (NB) mode and a super wideband (SWB) mode. The SWB
mode can handle up to 14 kHz audio frequencies.

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Figure 9 presents the average MOS for different voice applications.

VoLTE with AMR-WB 23.65 kbps provided a MOS of 3.9.The reference
CS narrowband call provided a score of 2.9 in the POLQA SWB scale
in good radio conditions, while the non-native SIP client with NB EFR
codec scored only slightly lower with 2.7. The same SIP client with an
AMR-WB codec configuration provided a score of 3.0. The score of
this and other third party SIP clients could be increased to 3.4 or 3.6
by tweaking some optional functionality such as deactivating voice
activity detection. However, this caused an increase in the power
consumption and throughput requirements as the application would
transmit a constant data stream regardless of whether the speaker
was talking or silent. The OTT VoIP applications scored between 4.1
and 4.2 in the POLQA SWB scale using proprietary codecs, quite close
to the native VoLTE client.
Future VoLTE voice quality can be further improved with the new super
wideband (SWB) and full band (FB) codecs, which will able to cover all
the voice and audio bandwidths. 3GPP has defined a new speech/
audio codec in Release 12 called Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) codec,
which includes SWB and FB modes in addition to NB and WB modes.
That codec will make it possible for VoLTE to match and beat the voice
quality of all OTT clients.
4.5
4.0

MOS

3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0

3G CS
AMR-NB

SIP EFR

SIP
AMR-WB

OTT AP1

OTT AP2

OTT AP3

VoLTE

Fig. 9. Voice quality with different voice applications.

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Next, we present voice quality measurements for VoLTE and for one
OTT VoIP as a function of network loading. VoLTE uses QoS Class
Identifier (QCI) 1, while OTT VoIP is carried as non-guaranteed data
traffic. A LTE base station is able to identify VoLTE calls and prioritize
VoLTE in the packet scheduler. Figure 10 shows MOS measurements
as a function of cell loading. Two cases are studied: good radio
conditions with the signal level better than -80 dBm and bad radio
conditions with the signal level at -110 dBm. The voice quality for
VoLTE remains stable regardless of the loading, while the quality of
OTT VoIP decreases as a function of loading. The OTT VoIP call also
frequently drops during high loading. There is some difference in the
voice quality between good and bad radio conditions but the VoLTE
quality remains stable, also under bad radio conditions.

OTT VoIP-Good

OTT VoIP-Bad

VoLTE-Good

VoLTE-Bad

4.5
4.0

MOS

3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0

OTT VoIP fails

to work

1.5
1.0

21

192

382

762

1902

Effective number of non-GBR data users

Fig. 10. Voice quality with different loadings in good and bad radio conditions.

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Mouth-to-ear delay as a function of loading is shown in Figure 11.

The delay for VoLTE remains constant for all different load cases,
demonstrating the benefit of QoS and Nokia Smart Scheduler in
the base station. The delay of OTT VoIP increases as a function of
simultaneous data loading in the cell.
OTT-Bad

VoLTE-Good

300

352

352

491

525

451

500

427

541

600

300

Mouth to Ear Delay (ms)

700

400

VoLTE-Bad
661

OTT-Good

200

OTT VoIP fails

to work

100
0

21

192

382

762

1902

Effective non-GBR Load (users)

Fig. 11. Mouth-to-ear delay with different loadings.

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The call setup time is an important factor affecting the quality perceived
by the end user. Figure 12 shows how VoLTE can significantly improve
the call establishment time compared to the legacy CS systems. The
total time for call establishment depends on many factors such as
whether the handsets were initially in RRC Idle or RRC Connected
state when the call was originated and the latency experienced by the
signaling network. The laboratory measurements show a VoLTE call
setup time of 0.9 2.2 s, while the delay in the field is slightly higher
depending on the operator network and transport architecture. The
corresponding typical CS call setup time is four seconds and with CS
Fallback (CSFB) at both ends, approximately six seconds.
Call setup time

7.0

6.0

6.0

Seconds

5.0
3.8

4.0
3.0

2.4

2.2

2.0
0.9

1.0
0.0

idle - idle
(eld)

idle - idle
VoLTE

connected connected

3G idle CSFB - CSFB

idle
CS voice

Fig. 12. Call setup time measurements.

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To minimize the call setup time, an operator can apply a special paging
strategy for incoming VoLTE calls. VoLTE paging logic is executed in a
Mobility Management Entity (MME), based on the Evolved Packet Core
(EPC) bearer information from the Serving Gateway in the Downlink
Data Notification (DDN) message. The IMS network may assist this
procedure by marking packets related to the incoming voice calls with
a special Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) value.
Figure 13 shows an example of paging response delay distribution. A
more aggressive timer value for paging a re-try timer could be applied
for VoLTE to minimize the paging response delay, for example two
seconds instead of a typical value of several seconds. In addition, MME
could be configured to execute VoLTE paging immediately for the
whole Tracking Area instead of first paging the last known cell.

Number of Samples

1000

100

10

9.5

8.5

More

Delay between Paging and Service Request

7.5

6.5

5.5

4.5

3.5

2.5

1.5

0.5

Fig. 13. Paging response delay distribution in live network.

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5. Handset Power Consumption

Optimization
Device battery life is one of the most relevant factors for smartphone
users. It can be extended by using advanced features in the radio
network and by optimized handset design. The two main factors
affecting the mobile handsets power consumption are considered to
be availability of radio optimization features such as Discontinuous
Reception (DRX) and the handsets implementation of the voice client.
The power optimization solutions are shown in Figure 14.
Handset architecture
optimization

VoLTE integrated to the chip set

Application processor can enter sleep mode

Radio features
including DRX

Discontinuous reception (DRX)

Modem activity from 100% to below 50%

Fig. 14. Mobile handset power saving solutions.

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The voice application can run in the handset application processor,

which however needs a lot of power. Power consumption can be
minimized by integrating a VoLTE client to the modem processor.
The idea of DRX is to use sleep mode in the handset between packet
receptions. The VoLTE voice packets arrive every 20 ms while the
transmission time in LTE is just 1 ms. Such bursty transmission and
reception allows the use of power saving sleep mode even between
voice packets. The DRX activation and parameter configurations are
controlled by the base station. The DRX can be configured in such
a way that two voice packets are transmitted simultaneously, which
increases the packet arrival period to 40 ms. Figure 15 illustrates the
instantaneous handset power consumption during a VoLTE call when
the person is listening and not talking. The short power peaks happen
mostly every 40 ms during the reception of the voice packet, while the
power consumption is considerably lower between the packets.
Current (mA)

600

Current (mA)

500
400
300
200
100

656.52

656.5

656.48

656.46

656.44

656.42

656.4

656.38

656.36

656.34

656.32

656.3

656.28

656.26

656.24

656.22

656.2

656.18

656.16

656.14

656.12

656.1

656.08

656.06

656.04

656.02

656

655.98

655.96

Time (s)
Fig. 15. Discontinuous reception (DRX) during VoLTE call.
The measured current consumption of different voice applications
is shown in Figure 16. VoLTE power consumption can be reduced by
80% with DRX. 121 mA has been measured on a handset, which is
even slightly below the 125 mA measured on the same codec on 3G
CS using the same handset. The power consumption of the OTT VoIP
application is substantially higher at 248 mA.

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300

Current (mA)

250

248

235

-50%

200
150

154
129

131

125

121

100
50
0

3G CS
AMR-NB

3G CS
AMR-WB

noDRX

DRX on with different settings

OTT VoIP

Fig. 16. Handset power consumption with different voice applications, showing 50% lower power
consumption for VoLTE than for OTT VoIP.

6. Summary
VoLTE is being deployed globally, supported by new VoLTE-capable
handsets. VoLTE can enhance an operators network efficiency and
improve end-user performance in areas such as voice quality and
setup times. This paper illustrates that optimization of radio features
and parameters is needed to provide reliable VoLTE connections with
high success rates and low drop rates. The live network results show
that excellent key performance indicators can be obtained for VoLTE in
optimized networks.
The measurements also show that VoLTE offers a number of benefits
compared to OTT VoIP applications, including robust performance and
higher voice quality during congestion and lower power consumption.
Reliability is obtained by using QoS features in the radio network and
by optimizing power consumption with the DRX feature.

7.

Further Reading

Nokia VoLTE white paper

Nokia VoWiFi white paper

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Public
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respective owners.
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Nokia Solutions and Networks 2015

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